Ontology as a Guide to Politics? Judith Butler on Interdependency, Vulnerability, and Nonviolence

Abstract

In recent work, Judith Butler has sought to develop a ‘new bodily ontology’ with a substantive normative upshot: recognition of our shared bodily condition, they argue, can support an ethic of nonviolence and a renewed commitment to egalitarian social conditions. However, the route from Butler’s ontological claims to their ethico-political commitments is not clear: how can the general ontological features of embodiment Butler identifies introduce constraints on behaviour or political arrangements? Ontology, one might think, is neutral on questions of politics. In this paper I reconstruct Butler’s response to this challenge, arguing that there is an interesting and plausible path from ontology to politics. I draw on Heidegger’s ontological/ontic distinction to elucidate the central concepts of Butler’s ontology: vulnerability, precariousness, and interdependency. I argue that one of Butler’s central attempts to derive an ethic of nonviolence from ontology is unpersuasive, resting on a conflation of the ontological and ontic senses of ‘interdependency’. Nonetheless, I contend that Butler is right that genuinely acknowledging our vulnerability is likely to make us more responsive to the claims of others, loosening the grip of ideals of invulnerability and sovereign independence. These ideals and the violence they encourage amount to a disavowal of our ontological condition, while commitment to nonviolence is a way of acknowledging</em it. Since a failure of acknowledgement is an ethical failure, we have a responsibility to act in ways that acknowledge our shared ontological condition—a general conclusion that is of interest even if one contests the specifics of Butler’s ontology.